


Living in Hallways

by lq_traintracks (lumosed_quill), traintracks



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-07 02:16:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumosed_quill/pseuds/lq_traintracks, https://archiveofourown.org/users/traintracks/pseuds/traintracks





	Living in Hallways

  
"It's torture," Harry had told her, but she'd come anyway.

She'd come every year. She had to. If only to reaffirm that they were still alive, that she still was.

She'd lean against the large oak across the street and watch them. It was particularly easy this night out of all the nights in the year, because they drew back their curtains as was their custom, and the light from the living room hearth and the cheery lamps cast a golden glow over the street.

Hermione would bite her lip and watch them roast chestnuts. It had been one of her favorite memories of childhood. It still was. For her.

Her mother's smile was off, but her cheeks still had that blushed glow Hermione remembered so well. Her father had lost so much weight. His clothes looked hung on his very bones.

The scene blurred. Hermione bit the inside of her cheek, hard.

Harry called it torture. Funny, she thought. Torture was the only known thing to break the spell. For not the first time, Hermione thought, Why not love? It had been ten years since she'd made them forget her. Nine years since they'd won the war. Six years since she'd begun teaching. Three since she'd become the youngest Headmistress the school had ever had. One year since she'd last seen them.

And all those years she'd spent too afraid to approach them, too scared there would be no glimmer of recognition, of hope. Or maybe worse, that there would be, and she'd have to face that she'd sacrificed these years for nothing – for fear, for shame.

Not just for that, though. For them. To let them live without her in peace.

She watched her mother laugh about something and straighten her hair. She was still straightening her hair like that. She sat on the sofa with her father, and their hands linked loosely.

Hermione did that with Ron.

Almost before she knew what she was doing, Hermione had stepped out from under the protection of the tree; she'd stepped into the street; she was half across.

She waited there an interminable amount of time, frozen with indecision. Ten seconds. Ten minutes. Ten years.

Then a horn blared, and she was bathed in the unnatural glare of headlights, and it was either run forward – or run back.

Hermione took a breath, closed her eyes, and Apparated to her parents' front door. For a long time, she was unable to knock, even though the hope pounded away in her heart, and she felt as though she might die from it.

She'd waited years to do this.

She could wait years more.

She stared at the knocker – the brass lion with the black beard from when she'd taken a permanent marker to it when she was six and could barely even reach. Now Hermione had a little girl. Now she was pregnant again.

She held her breath, a comforting hand on the minute swell of her belly, one heartbeat from walking away, from Apparating home to a family who already knew her and loved her.

But then she heard Harry's voice in her mind:

"Do it for yourself, Hermione. Do it so you can either close the door or open it all the way. Don't live in hallways."

Hermione raised her hand and knocked. While she waited, listening to them walk across a hardwood floor she knew by heart, she decided on what she would say – that she was moving into a house nearby and wondered if they could recommend a good school. Her old elementary school was one of her mother's favorite topics. It would be enough to at least get to see them for a little while. If she could keep from crying and ruining everything.

She thought she was ready. But then her mother opened the door, and after the briefest moment of incomprehension, the most awful, beautiful, soaring full-blown awareness swept over her face.

Hermione didn't know what was happening – didn't know if the spell had worn off ages ago or just this moment – but her mother was pulling Hermione to her so hard it was frightening, and she was yelling, her voice torn with agony and joy, "John! God, John!!" and then crying into Hermione's hair, shaking with her sobs.

Her father came running, then stopped short. The tears hit him so fast it was as though he'd been on the brink of this very thing for years.

"Dad?" Hermione found herself whispering. Her mother's arms tightened around her, and her father strode forward, stronger than he'd ever looked in all the years she'd neglected to contact them. He wrapped his arms around them both.

Hermione would have fallen to the floor if they hadn't been holding her up.

Her father shut the door, and she felt the house envelope her, remembering her. No matter what happened next, in this moment, she was home.  



End file.
